The child : a study in the evolution of man / by Alexander F. Chamberlain.

  • Alexander Francis Chamberlain
Date:
1900
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The child : a study in the evolution of man / by Alexander F. Chamberlain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    THE CHILD CHAPTER I THE MEANING OF THE HELPLESSNESS OF INFANCY Man at Birth.—How far man is from perfection when he begins life has been described by the old Latin philosopher, Lucretius, who wrote so many strangely modern things about the childhood of the race and the childhood of the individual: 'A child at its birth, like a mariner cast ashore by the angry waves, lies prostrate on the earth, naked, speechless, destitute of all the aids to existence, from the moment when it reaches the shores of light, torn from its mother's bosom by the efforts of nature; and it fills the place it has entered with dismal wailings.' i Major J. W. Powell, in his sketch of man's progress, From Barbarism to Civilisation (505, p. 97), puts the same thought mto somewhat different words: 'Every child is born destitute of things possessed in manhood, which distinguish him from the lower animals. Of all industries he is artless; of all institu- tions he is lawless; of all languages he is speechless; of all philosophies he is opinionless j of all reasoning he is thought- less ; but arts, institutions, languages, opinions and mentations he acquires as the years go by from childhood to manhood. In all these respects the new-born babe is hardly the peer of the new-born beast; but, as the years pass, ever and ever he exhibits his superiority in all of the great classes of activities, until the distance by which he is separated from the brute is so great that his realm of existence is in another kingdom of nature.' C/The meanmg of the helplessness of the human babe has only become apparent within our own century ; it has taken the philosophers long to appreciate the full significance of the pro- longation of human infancy. With the ancient writers, as with many primitive peoples, the weakness and hapless condition of 1 De Rerum Nalurd, Bk. V. A
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